Rex Smith: Don’t settle for a simple story

One of my college classmates planned to become a newspaper reporter, but instead he has grown up to be a United States senator. I can’t figure it out. He seemed so thoughtful.

I could have seen it coming, you know, because there are similarities in the way some journalists and politicians approach their jobs. For one thing, success in each field often has a lot to do with a person’s skill at storytelling. This fact prompts me to offer some words of warning in this campaign season to readers and voters alike: As you weigh where to place your trust, in both journalism and politics, don’t settle for a mere storyteller.

Not that storytelling isn’t important. Myth, fable and parable have carried the currents of civilization through the millenia. Anecdotes help illustrate realities that might otherwise be hard to understand. Great stories are to be treasured.

But a story in journalism is nothing without solid reporting. Style can’t substitute for depth. And there’s a similar dynamic — or there should be, anyway — in government: The fuel for the story must be policy and fact. Otherwise, we should feel free to consider a politician’s story to be only so much hot air.

You almost can’t blame candidates for turning to little stories. The scope of the challenges facing government are so vast, and the solutions so complex, that it’s tempting to resort to tales that seem to tell larger truths rather than risk losing citizens in a morass of policy. It’s hard enough to even get a voter’s attention at all; if you can do that, you don’t want to lose somebody by being boring.

Besides, the generation of candidates now asking for our votes mostly came of political age in the era of Ronald Reagan, a towering political presence who was considered one of the world’s great communicators, a reputation built in no small part on the anecdotes, jokes and incidents that illustrated his ideas.

Reagan’s stories always supported a narrative of America that matched his idealized vision of what the country ought to be — a place grounded in family and hard work, resolutely guiding the world toward freedom. It was an intoxicating view that matched the hopes of the times, and people responded enthusiastically.

When he made errors in his stories, folks didn’t seem to mind. He wasn’t right, of course, when he said in 1981, “Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do,” and he seems to have snatched a number from thin air when he asserted during his re-election campaign that a Democratic tax plan would cost every family $1,800. No matter: Voters seemed to sense a clarity of message and genuine good will in the man. Nobody before or since won as many electoral votes as Reagan did that year.

Now candidates of all stripes ape that master storyteller. But anecdotes don’t close multibillion-dollar budget gaps, make economies grow again or deliver justice. That’s the hard work of government today, and unless a politician can offer clear and specific details on how he or she would do that, and more, you’re making a mistake to hand over your trust or your vote.

I’m actually a bit sympathetic with those pols who like to story-tell their way along the trail. It’s a familiar problem for an editor.

Newspapers have always embraced great tales, but the tradition of using an anecdote at the top of a story to illustrate the substance that follows dates from about the mid-1970s. It was then that the great front-page articles in The Wall Street Journal began to display a sort of formula: a three-paragraph anecdotal “lede” (yes, that’s how we spell the word), followed by a “nut” paragraph explaining what the story was about, leading on to the guts of the piece.

An editor may sometimes find that a story that begins with promise falls apart after the lede. When that happens, it’s almost always a result of inadequate reporting. It’s time then to send a reporter back to the street to get more substance.

I’d like to do that to a few candidates I’ve encountered this year: just send ’em back to do their homework.

Folks, the easy stuff has already been done. That is, the excessive spending that nobody will miss has been cut; the jobs that don’t accomplish anything have mostly been eliminated, and the taxes and fees nobody will notice have been added. What comes next will be painful.

In that context, it’s tempting for a pol to tell a little tale and hope voters will find it appealing enough that they won’t notice a missing detail or two. Don’t buy it, people. If a solution sounds simple, it’s almost surely simplistic.

One Response

Wow, of all the bald-faced lies the media has bought into from Democrates you went back to grab that little gem from Reagan. Classic TU.

Where’s the story on the impending massive tax hikes for all Americans that flies in the face of all of Obama’s promises not to raise taxes on any couple who makes more than 250k? This isn’t partisan rhetoric, it’s a fact.

So, here I am, demanding at least a simple story. Get that far at least.